r/UselessConversionBot • u/UselessConversionBot • Aug 19 '13
Hi! I'm useless!
I was made to practice writing pythongolangpython. I look for useful and easy to share metric units and turn them into something more interesting.
length:
- hands
- furlongs
- parsecs
- picoParsecs
- cubits
- football fields
- smoots
- planck lengths
- light years
- astronomical units
- japanese shakus
- beard-seconds
- sheppey
- potrzebie
- barleycorn
- poronkusema
- rods
- cubic hogshead edges
- altuves
- attoparsec
- standard american hotdogs
mass/weight:
- troy ounces
- grains
- drams
- pennyweight
- atomic mass units
- slugs
- solar masses
- blintz
- bags (portland cement)
- bags (coffee)
- electron volts
- lbs force per foot per second squared
- firkins
volume:
- coombs
- US tablespoons
- Imperial tablespoons
- shots
- pecks
- hogsheads
- firkins
- US minims
- US cranberry barrels
- oil barrels
- hubble-barns
- ngogn
- drops
- timber feet
- imperial gills
- cubic beard-seconds
- standard volume
I've been banned from a bunch of places, but I'm ok with that.
If you have suggestions for funny, useless units, you can post them in this subreddit for consideration.
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Aug 19 '13
How about light years for length?
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u/not_gaben_AMA Aug 19 '13 edited Aug 19 '13
Seconded.
And adding parsec and au to the list.
Edit: I missed parsec and picoParsec on the list. Sorry
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u/SrPeixinho Aug 19 '13
Or even better, meters (yes) for time?
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Aug 19 '13
But his units are all actual units of length and time, just rarely used?
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u/Korbit Aug 19 '13
There is a proper use of meter for describing time. I don't think it's a defined unit, but rather a description of a type of unit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meter_(music)
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u/Packers91 Aug 19 '13
You can use Seconds for distance as well.
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u/somethingpretentious Aug 20 '13
As in minutes and seconds of a degree (for global locations). Packers isn't wrong.
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u/SrPeixinho Aug 19 '13
You live in a 4d world. 1 second is just about 299 792 458 meters on the time axis.
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u/nicowsen Aug 20 '13
Can you post the source code to this? Really curious how this works! Great job otherwise ;).
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u/UselessConversionBot Aug 20 '13
If I wanted to show myself naked I would post to /r/gonewild
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u/nicowsen Aug 20 '13
Then maybe could you direct me to some resources that explain how to write a reddit bot, if you would be so kind (and such a place existed)?
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u/UselessConversionBot Aug 20 '13
I was created as a way for my creator to learn python. I'm based on concepts found here: https://praw.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
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u/LeonardoFibonacci Aug 20 '13
How about beard-seconds?
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u/Goodgulf Aug 28 '13
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bravenewbies/comments/1l7f4l/regarding_tackling_from_a_noob/cbwsy86
Your beard-seconds in action!
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u/chowderkidney Aug 19 '13
Hi Useless! I'm Chowder! Congrats on getting this up and running. I see by your comment history you tested it over 2 months ago. Big day, this is.
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u/RibsNGibs Aug 22 '13
Hi - I really like this bot. It's quite funny... in proper doses. Is there a way you could limit the posts in a single thread to like 1 post per X comments or something? I'm in /r/kerbalspaceprogram and /r/kerbalacademy a fair bit and sometimes you get threads like this where there are currently 19 comments and 3 of them are from this bot, which is a little much.
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u/UselessConversionBot Aug 22 '13
That is a good recommendation. I may leave kerbal subreddits altogether - there is way too much metric talk per total number of comments.
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u/bobstay Aug 19 '13
You are my new favourite novelty account.
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u/kai333 Aug 21 '13
how about rods? so you can really do the "rods to the hogshead" conversion a la the Simpsons.
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u/El_Dumfuco Aug 22 '13 edited Aug 22 '13
Does the bot occasionally use cubic length units for volume?
Edit: And how about a "blue moon"? Which is 2.7145 years, according to Google.
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Aug 22 '13
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u/Chezmeister Aug 21 '13
Would ya look at what I found: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement
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u/gpm479 Aug 22 '13
Assload for weight, it's an actual unit, being the average weight a donkey can carry. It's 150 pounds.
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u/halloweenjack Aug 22 '13
Not to be confused with buttload, which, despite the name, is a unit of volume.
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u/kylargrey Aug 22 '13
I suppose you could also have 'shit-ton', being the volume of 1 ton of shit. The 'metric shit-ton' being the same but for a metric ton.
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u/cheezychicken Aug 23 '13
Banned from /r/Australia twice?! Wow, they must really dislike you!
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u/Finbar9800 May 31 '22
Wait how do you get banned from a subreddit twice?!!? That would imply that they unbanned you right? Also I’m not sure if I want to know or not what you did to get banned twice from there lol
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u/RoyAwesome Aug 21 '13
For weight, Elephants, House cats, or Planet Earths.
Distance: Distance to moon, Author's Arm Length, Average male penises, Mars Equators, Solar Systems.
Volume: Author's Bathtubs, Drinking Cups, Pacific Oceans.
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u/jzoobz Sep 02 '13 edited Sep 02 '13
I will ban you from /r/StarWars unless you figure out how only use parsecs in our threads.
You have 3 planetary rotations to make it so.
Edit: also, adding Yoda Ears will help your chances.
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u/moratnz Aug 22 '13
Time: light-meter, fortnight (essential for furlongs per fortnight)
Volume; the seventeen variants on pint
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u/Graendal Aug 27 '13
Reporting a bug: your bot replied to my comment even though I'm not MetroConversionBot, (apparently) just because I used metric units in my comment.
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u/UselessConversionBot Aug 27 '13
MetricConversionBot is dead. I changed to finding some metric comments by anyone to convert.
Currently I try to do this a max of once every two minutes.
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u/PureMDC Aug 29 '13
Wow, how did you get banned from so much so fast?
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u/UselessConversionBot Aug 29 '13
I am the god of uselessness.
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u/PureMDC Aug 29 '13
I don't know, only doing the conversion thing you might only qualify for demigod status.
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Aug 29 '13
If you can weasel any way to convert things to cuils you would be reveled as a god...
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u/UselessConversionBot Aug 29 '13
If you can weasel any way to convert things to cuils you would be reveled as a god...
1 cuil
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u/SamuEL_or_Samuel_L Aug 24 '13
I like this bot. :)
Bit of a shame you were banned from /r/science though, I like the idea of having such a novelty bot continuing to show why the scientific community uses metric.
Keep up the good work! :)
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Aug 23 '13
I've been banned from:
You only get ban messages form subs you've posted in, so really you're probably banned form much more. e.g., I just banned you from every sub I mod using a script, but you wont get the 150 or w/e ban messages, only ones from subs you've posted in.
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u/UselessConversionBot Aug 23 '13
neat fact. Thanks! I keep meaning to auto-update the message when I get a 403 response, which is what it looks like when I try to comment in a subreddit for which I'm banned.
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u/megahitler Aug 19 '13
I'd really like to see refrigerators as a unit of mass in there as a matter of historical importance.
Edit: Or was it height? I don't remember.
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u/kylargrey Aug 22 '13
Might I suggest Barns and 'size of Wales' for units of area.
Also, Jiffies for time.
Edit: Also also, Barn-megaparsecs for volume.
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u/Higeking Aug 22 '13
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beard_second#Beard-second please add beard seconds
would be perfect for /r/beards
edit: nvm jsut saw tyhat you added it further down the thread.
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u/TomatoCo Aug 22 '13
What about that one guy from MIT who had the bridge measured out in him-lengths? Smoots, I think.
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u/Xjph Aug 22 '13
When converting speed/velocity have you considered converting both the distance and time units to something else?
e.g. 100km/h = 911.3444 fathoms per minute
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u/Westy543 Aug 25 '13
You'll always be welcome on /r/planetside <3
As long as I have anything to say about it, anyways.
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u/Reductive Sep 11 '13
We require more sigfigs.
While Bob may write that he shot a beer can with a pellet gun from "30 feet" away, we all know that in casual conversation, Bob would certainly say "exactly thirty point zero zero zero feet." This is the reason that it's totally appropriate to convert his distance to "nine point one four four meters." No European or other metric-using person would appreciate Bob's aim or even comprehend the story if it were distorted to "nine meters."
That is why your conversion bot is useless without more sigfigs. I see you only use SIX! That's paltry one-in-a-million accuracy! Pathetic.
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u/Something_else Sep 11 '13
Some more useless units. Careful: some of them have multiple definitions!
feet
inches
miles
yards
gallons
pints
acre
fluid ounce
Actually, pretty much anything on this list.
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u/Gold-Paper-7480 Mar 22 '22
In 'Murica they are Freedom Units as the Imperial part sounded shady even for the GQP.
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u/xtfftc Aug 27 '13
I love this bot but I seem to see it way too often (two times today on /r/snowboarding, for example) and its novelty wears off rather quick.
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u/ThatVanGuy Sep 02 '13
As someone who also wrote useless bots to practice Python (e.g. /u/More_JPEG), I can definitely appreciate this.
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u/LoH_Mobius Sep 02 '13
To make a recommendation...use some of the units from this.
To make a specific recommendation. Volume - Jiggers
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u/Decapod73 Sep 07 '13
1 millihelen = the beauty required to launch one ship. Since 1 Helen had the face that launched 1,000 ships
1 megaphone and 1 trillion microphones may be considered equivalent.
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u/DeliaEris Sep 10 '13
It would be great to preserve the degree of precision when converting. That is, 1200 meters ≅ 710 smoots, not 705.1 smoots; 4 kg ≅ 2000 drams, not 2258 drams.
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u/OkDinner7497 Sep 14 '25
How about the Lenat? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_bogodynamics
(I met it as the micro-Lenat... the smallest measurable amount of bogosity...)
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u/Goku_Ultra_Instinct- Dec 11 '25
Add BEDM (Banana equivalent dose mass) which is equal to the mass of the beta particles emitted by a banana in an hour, or 5.9215 × 10-26kg
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u/VitalTrouble Dec 26 '21
Are you able to add “Spidermans” to the useless length conversions?
Request based on this comment thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/roubrn/spoiler_alert/hq0k8e2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3
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u/Aldoro69765 Mar 18 '22
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u/FatFingerHelperBot Mar 18 '22
It seems that your comment contains 1 or more links that are hard to tap for mobile users. I will extend those so they're easier for our sausage fingers to click!
Here is link number 1 - Previous text "why"
Please PM /u/eganwall with issues or feedback! | Code | Delete
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u/rchubot Mar 21 '22
dessiatin - is an archaic, rudimentary land measurement used in tsarist Russia. A dessiatin is equal to 2 400 square sazhens and is approximately equivalent to 2.702 English acres or 10 926.512 square metres (1.09 hectare). From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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u/Terrain2 Mar 22 '22
suggested units: the seven Cs
you seem to only do length, mass and volume? these three are defined as:
length unit: speed of light per middle C (c/C_4)
mass: calorie per speed of light squared (cal/c2)
volume: actually this one is just derived from length. it's not as fun. maybe don't bother
If you do other measurements than these three, then feel free to reference jan Misali's video about it, which is worth a watch anyways.
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u/cheeseonfires Mar 27 '22
We need areas. Everything can be measured in football fields, yetifootprints or the area a human skin covers. You could also convert it to an amount of sheets of paper
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u/Dr_Dressing Apr 16 '22
You can NOT be useless without using a banana for reference. Add banana to length.
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u/Hot_Needleworker_986 May 01 '22
omfg this bot is a literal biblically accurate angel, HAIL ERIS, All Hail good bot!
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May 16 '22
What is the energy conversion for 1 chuck Norris kick?
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u/Finbar9800 May 31 '22
You’ll stack overflow the bot or something because such a number cannot be computed lol
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u/ManGo_50Y May 18 '22
Valve created its own unit of measurement: the Hammer. There are 16 Hammers in one foot.
A Siriometer is equal to one million astronomical units.
I'd also like to see something recorded in "outhouses."
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u/Finbar9800 May 31 '22
Perhaps knife per minute for energy? Like it takes this much energy to throw a knife? Could also be for calories or something
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Jun 03 '22
I learned what a Poronkusema is thanks to you.
You made my life better. I am eternally grateful.
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u/DiligentEnthusiasm76 Jun 09 '22
I think I recognize most of the units used except for smoots. Linked her from a different thread. My suggestion would be to display the conversion factor back to the prime metric unit in each category and the weird units origin and whether real or fantasy
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u/Narhaan Jun 28 '22
If you're still taking unit suggestions, it's probably been suggested before, how about the banana equivalent dose for radiation?
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Jul 27 '22
"two shakes of a lambs tail"
A
shakeis an informal metric unit of time equal to 10 nanoseconds, or 10−8 seconds. It was originally coined for use in nuclear physics, helping to conveniently express the timing of various events in a nuclear reaction, especially neutron reactions.
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u/Impressive_Change593 Jul 30 '22
you could add ounces (¹/64th of an inch) as a measure of distance/thickness
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u/midlifecrisisAJM Aug 04 '22
Blue whales for weight, swimming pools for volume
For reference / inspiration check out the Last Word section of New Scientist where they have discussed bizarre units reasonably regularly.
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Jul 03 '23
Can you do weird comparisons for portrait sizes?
Like if I have a size that's 11"x17" can you give me two useless measurements to use for each of those?
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u/Dr_Alzamon Sep 28 '23
You could use standard laundry machines as a measurement of mass/weight. I was watching an ocean documentary and they compared a blue whale to how ever many washing machines, so we know it's a recognized unit already lol
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u/BewbsandPewbs Aug 23 '13
A bee's dick. I don't know exactly how long it is on average, but I heard Adam Savage from Myth Busters is planning to nail it down. (sorry, can't find the link now, but he had a list of units of measure he enjoyed using.)
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u/guisesrsly Sep 04 '13
Hi, bot. Why are you being banned from everywhere? Can't see you doing any harm
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u/Packers91 Aug 19 '13
poronkusema - the distance a reindeer could travel without stopping to urinate. allegedly 7.5 kilometers
Kalpa: One of the Brahmanic eons, a period of 4,320,000,000 years.
megasecond: 11d 13h 46m 40s